 Let's start off by saying that the adversarial system does have its place when there are facts and disputes that need to be settled, when law needs to be interpreted or applied to factual situations, and when necessary offenders need to be removed from society for a period of time. But there are lots of reasons why the adversarial justice system is not a one-size-fits-all. It's not user-friendly, it does not lend itself to restoring relationships and appearing terms. It will cause for many folks a lot of anxiety. Delay can factor into things very quickly. Only about 10% of all cases, and that's perhaps liberal, 10% of all cases that actually go to trial yet we use an adversarial justice system to deal with the other 90% as well. And so we've got to think about ways that we can use other processes to handle 90% of the cases, because the adversarial system is very time-consuming and it's very expensive. So I ask you first to consider this question. Do all violations of the law require a criminal court process? Especially in these times when we know that things like criminal records not only create barriers for employment, they also create barriers, huge barriers for travel. Do we need to criminalize everyone, or rather should we look at means of being able to have folks accept responsibility, be held accountable in other ways, especially when we're talking about minor criminal violations, mischief, thefts, administration of justice, offenses, breach of corridors, and even municipal and provincial offenses. Put your bag of garbage on the wrong side of the street when you're charged or it's out of the wrong day, or you've got a dog that's barking and then setting you up. Or there's a noise complaint where you've got parking tickets. Do all of those things need to go through the adversarial criminal justice system? No. But we need to find ways to divert them and to be able to provide just processes and just outcomes. And much of that will be left to us, to people who believe in restorative justice, who can think outside of the box, who can look at creative ways of resolving disputes. Because I can tell you that for the most part, folks in the mainstream criminal justice system do not see things the way that I do and the way that you do. What they do see is a system that is slow, ineffective, and costly. But they do not know how to make it better. So we need to think about ways that 90% of matters, 87% to 60%, 50% of all matters, can be taken out of the present system and dealt with more effectively. So one way is therapeutic courts and programs. So in Nova Scotia, we do have a mental health court for folks who have major mental health disorder, who's offending behaviors connected to their mental illness, and they have a willingness to accept responsibility. And so those folks will go through our program, which is, for the most part, a restorative type of process, connecting them to resources, providing support plans, restoring relationships, repairing homes, all while making connections to the community so that they're supported in the community when we're no longer there. And to be able to, in some small measure, try and destigmatize mental illness. There's only one mental health court, though, in the province. It's funded by the government. So that's a problem. How do we address that? Well, we're in the process of trying to convince champions around the province to develop programs unfunded, but bring the professionals together to work in much the same ways the mental health court does. Amish Walbright has one such program, and Jennifer Furlongs with RJ, in the Amish area, has been certainly a champion in that program. So while this court was in Roxbury, championed by the judge there. We have a Kentville Diversary mental health program. That was championed by, believe it or not, police and the mental health community. And so later on this month, I'm going to be meeting with the executive director of the Nova Scotia Health Authority, her four zone directors, and the late psychiatrist. Hopefully to convince them that we need to embark upon a partnership between justice and health, share resources, and develop programs that we can offer similar type of services in all areas of the province. So it's a work in progress. Another example I'd like to provide you is still dealing with the mental health court, is there is criteria that I've just spoken of. We found early on that there were many folks with drug addiction issues. We didn't have an addiction worker. So we were able to go to health again, find resource in the form of an addiction worker. And then we realized folks that appeared to have primarily a substance abuse issue and not a mental health issue. So we created a court under drug treatment program under the mental health court with no federal funding. There is a program in Kentville that has some federal funding, but we have none. But we saw the need to deal with folks with drug addiction. Then we have another group of folks, primarily but not exclusively, a very vulnerable Aboriginal community, who did not fit the criteria of mental health court, who did not fit the criteria for the court monitor of treatment program because there was not an opioid addiction and they were not in the opioid treatment program. But he had significant issues, both in the form of perhaps trauma and addiction. So we kind of created what we called a judicial monitoring program under the umbrella of the mental health court so that we don't have to push those folks back to the industry. So we are monitoring their progress. We're getting them in. Sometimes there's a girl to play, sometimes there's not. We're trying to connect them with services and monitor our progress to try and keep them out of the industry and keep them out of the jail. Why do I provide you with that example? Because what I've just described to you is one little process we started with one of the mental health court. Then we saw other needs and we had to be creative in finding other programs to meet those needs. We are presently in discussion with the province, Paul Marshall included, to look at a glad-do-wellness type of court in an Aboriginal community and that is incredibly exciting that process. Hopefully that would be a model that can be used elsewhere. Putting on my hat as chief, I'm able to try and educate the bench, the need for these kinds of programs. And although it was slow going in the beginning, many of the judges now are on board with these ideas of therapeutic or specialty courts or programs. Even tried to create something within their own mainstream courtroom. That's more of a rehabilitative restorative type of things like sensing circles before sentencing, human circles. Delayed sentencing under section 720, subsection two of the criminal code to allow, for example, reparation of harm, restitution payments, rehabilitative efforts. Pharmacist. So there are exciting opportunities. Further exciting opportunity that I'm looking forward to is next February and May. In February we have an annual bench meeting which usually talks about process type issues. It's going to be a knowledge sharing, cultural competency and cultural impact training day. And we're going to be inviting in folks from the aboriginal community, African-Moscowian community, LGBTQ community, veterans, mental health and addictions. And our judges can be educated and have a better understanding of cultural impact on the cases that are here for you. So there are ways. We just need to be creative and think outside the box. We need to have sessions like this where we have people coming from all sorts of disciplines that can provide us with ideas for reaching out and doing better. Same old, same old, no longer an option. Restorative justice, all kinds of potential.